


Power

by KestrelGirl



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Alien Space Bats, Body Horror, Gen, Gender Fuckery, POV Second Person, Spoilers, referenced nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KestrelGirl/pseuds/KestrelGirl
Summary: Is it all you'd dreamed of?Contains heavy spoilers for the Power ending of Ambition: Heart’s Desire, as well as Lost in Reflections, and probably a lot of other scattered references to mid-endgame content.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Power

You’re not one of them.

Nothing the Masters can do will ever change that. But they can hide the fact, and expertly so.

In the beginning, you don’t  _ really _ need the robe. No one would know of your heart’s desire if you were to go without it; they would only know you as you are.

For now.

You don’t wish to recall the first time you let your new compatriots wreak their Red Science witchcraft upon you. Or any time after - even if you weren’t strapped to a table in the ensuing visits. There’s simply no word for the things you feel, and it’s not just that the pain is indescribable.

But that, you suppose, is the price of power.

It must be an amusing, if repulsive, monthly scene - a cloaked figure, hunched over your half-submerged nude form, within the dimly lit and gently pulsing inner reaches of an enormous celestial crab. You oscillate between shuddering and convulsing as this month’s Master works its magic, occasionally splashing it with the mysterious substance in which you bathe.

These trips within are the only time you really  _ notice:  _ the reason your gait is unfamiliar (your calves were not always stretched this thin), the ache in your jaw (something is very wrong here), why your shoulders seem to lock at random (you know what will be there, someday). 

Until this finishes - did Hearts say it would take a  _ century? _ \- you can but dream. And it is always the same: your arms are pinned to your sides, until you pull and pull, and tear them free in a storm of flesh and gore, unfurling skin-bound wings. You assume Spices’ drug is the source of these lucid horrors.

The Masters have told you, time and time again, that charity precipitated Mirrors’ fall from grace. Once upon a time you were willing to help any soul in need. Now you laugh at the thought - but some part of you still shudders.

Do your nostrils perhaps flare more than they used to, or is it a trick of the light?

The first time you skip a session at the Bazaar, the next nearly breaks you, leaves you aching to the bone for months afterward. Thus, you cannot spend too long away from home; how dreary. You feel trapped.

Time seems to dissolve. You count years, not days. They will pass more quickly that way. The nightmares fade, and the decisions and mind-games ease.

You also used to have… particular urges. Some trick of Red Science seems to have removed their very source. You don’t miss them. You wonder, for a moment, if you should.

But letting the transformation float by for a  _ hundred years  _ is… a double-edged sword. Your mind was not fooling you; you realize after a brief while that it can no longer do that. Twelve hundred times you’ll walk through the Ormolu Door, and it will only take a few before it becomes clear to those around you that you are  _ different. _

The day someone points out your limp, your ruined posture, your growing aversion to what little bright light there is in the Neath, you resolve to cover it. Soon the robe is the only solution. There is less framework in it every year than there was before, for you are growing, in ways your meager human body should not.

You suppose it’s quite nice to no longer need tailored clothes.

Less than fifteen years in, the Sixth City falls - but you do not mourn the Fifth, even though it made you. You console Fires, telling it that London was a necessary casualty. You did not always think this way.

You are not growing older. You see nary a wrinkle, nor a single wiry silver strand. Rather, you are sprouting hair, coarse and thick and unfamiliar. You also have more skin, where skin should not be. You can move your arms less than before. It feels disgusting, once in a while, in a familiar way - and then you take Spices’ drug, and leave the matter alone.

For half a decade, the procedures focus on one hand. It is no longer a hand. After another five years, nor is the other. Having a bat’s claws is not quite like you imagined it; you hadn’t reckoned on the amount of dexterity you’d lose. No matter. You will have no need for it, once this is all over.

You don’t look in the mirror anymore. Not after the time you stole a glimpse, and saw your unbecoming squint, the cartilage of your nose curled upward and splayed against your forehead, your bulging jaws, your sharp, sharp teeth. There are only changes and lessons and lessons and changes.

Paris has grown and evolved since its fall. So have you, since your descent, in ways you could never have imagined. Time slips through your taloned grasp. It doesn’t occur to you that your penance of sorts - your punishment for being a mere human - will soon expire, until you walk through the gilt-bronze gate and find all the Masters there to greet you.

This time, you remember everything. It is not quite like your dreams, so long ago that you can barely recall them - but they were an omen. You watch your awkwardly hanging flesh knit together through beady eyes, and it is as if your entire body tightens - and then bursts free, and your shoulders ripple with motion for the first time in… how long? As Pages delivers a verbose lecture on your new duties, you stretch the spindly things you used to call your arms. They are much more useful now.

You look down, at fur and claw and straining sinew. There used to be something else there; perhaps you were ashamed of it. It is no longer visible. Once, that might have disturbed you - but you instead decide you have finally triumphed over the frivolities of human gender. It won’t be important anymore; the robe will hide it anyway.

You think of your past self as a pawn. Now you move the pieces. This was what you wanted.

But although it will never occur to you what it is, you long for something lost, never to return.


End file.
